Standardization of processes and data is one of the benefits that users gain from business application software. Data is structured and as such put into databases and other structured storage, from where it can be retrieved easily and which allows for methodically analyzing it. Often such data will be used to populate forms which themselves represent data in a structured manner.
An example of such a form would be a financial assessment of a mortgage applicant.
While most data is available in a measurable and often numeric value, there may be additional explanatory information that might be relevant for a credit decision (in the case of a mortgage application). For instance, a drop in the FICO score might have an explanation, such as a medical incident or fraud committed by a third party. Additionally, there might be supporting documentation. While some of these cases can be anticipated, and built into the system and into the forms that are used to collect and report the information, there will always be the occasional request that unformatted context needs to be collected and stored. Often such information then has to populate well-defined paper forms, that don't have space for explanations in the particular locations of the form, where such explanations would be most helpful.
Current systems do not allow to systematically handle such situations. This is particularly the case when data is electronically stored in structured storage, such as databases and then such data is reproduced into well defined forms. State of the art is to allow for a general comment that handles the whole data-set or form.